CHUQUET, Nicolas (1445 ?–1488). Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres. Edited by Aristide Marre (1823–1918). Rome : Imprimerie des Sciences Mathématiques, 1881.

Rare offprint issue of the first publication of the first algebraic text to use exponents to denote powers and negative numbers in the solution of equations, presentation copy. The complete manuscript text of the 15^th-century French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet’s previously unknown work was discovered by the linguist Aristide Marre in 1880. Marre immediately recognized this work as predating Estienne de La Roche’s l'Arismetique (1520), which was then considered to be the first important French work on algebra. After some investigation, it emerged that La Roche had been Chuquet’s student at Lyons, and had been given the latter’s manuscripts after his death in 1488. La Roche subsequently copied the groundbreaking algebra of Le Triparty, passing it off as his own in the first section of his l'Arismetique and only briefly mentioning Chuquet’s name in the introduction. Published individually here for the first time, Chuquet’s work is now considered one of the most original mathematical texts of the fifteenth century, indeed the most important since Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci almost three centuries earlier. This copy is inscribed by Marre to Barthélemy Hauréau a medieval historian and director of the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque Nationale. DSB III pp. 272-79.

Large quarto (298 x 215mm). (Somewhat toned, scattered foxing throughout). Modern red half morocco with original blue front wrapper bound in, gilt stamped spine, marbled endpapers (wrapper toned, minor chipping, a small repaired tear). Provenance: Barthélemy Hauréau, 1812–1896 (inscription).